WebSocket

What This Skill Does

The WebSocket skill enables OpenClaw AI to establish, manage, and maintain robust bidirectional communication channels. Unlike standard HTTP requests, this skill handles the complexities of stateful connections, including automatic reconnection with exponential backoff, jitter implementation to prevent thundering herd scenarios, and application-level heartbeats. It provides a reliable interface for real-time data streaming, keeping the connection alive despite proxy idle timeouts and network instability.

Installation

To integrate this skill, run the following command in your terminal: clawhub install openclaw/skills/skills/ivangdavila/websocket

Use Cases

• Real-Time Dashboards: Syncing live metrics, financial tickers, or server logs directly to the AI interface.
• Chat and Collaboration: Building responsive communication bots that require low-latency interaction.
• Live Notifications: Reacting instantly to events, such as system alerts or incoming data triggers, without polling the server.
• Remote Control Interfaces: Enabling the AI to send commands to connected IoT devices or backend services continuously.

Example Prompts

1. "Initialize a secure WebSocket connection to wss://api.example.com/v1/stream and keep the connection alive with a 30s heartbeat interval."
2. "If the connection drops, please implement an exponential backoff strategy with jitter, but cap the retries at 10 attempts before notifying me."
3. "Subscribe to the live ticker events using the existing WebSocket connection and summarize any price movements greater than 2%."

Tips & Limitations

• State Management: Always track the readyState before attempting to push data. Use the built-in queuing mechanism for messages sent during the CONNECTING phase.
• Security: Avoid passing tokens in the URL query string if possible, as these can appear in server access logs. Prefer the 'first message auth' pattern.
• Proxy Configuration: Ensure your infrastructure supports the Upgrade header and that proxy_read_timeout is set higher than your heartbeat interval to prevent accidental disconnects.
• Scaling: Remember that WebSockets are stateful. When scaling your backend, utilize sticky sessions or a Redis-backed pub/sub layer to coordinate messages across multiple server instances. Do not rely on TCP keepalive; always implement application-level pings.